Good on Ghana, hope they don’t get any more embarrassed by Brasil than the USA were by the Czech Republic. Actually, that probably won’t be possible for a couple of reasons:

a) Any team that gets defeated by Brasil is..well…normal. Brasil is already expected to win.

b) Any team that beats the USA is…well…normal. The current attitude is that the USA will lose; even by Americans.

Which brings me to my current rant:

Why is the USA so hypocritical (not Team USA, but the collective citizenship of the United States)? They expect a winner from a team that they don’t support in a sport they don’t understand. Football (soccer) fans were harder to find than a needle in a haystack (probably ‘cuz they’re all in Germany) around here. So when the world stage that is the World Cup comes around, who do the Americans have to root for them at home? NOBODY. That’s a damn shame.

We have enough immigrants around here that root for their home teams and badmouth the USA; why do Americans do the same?

"Soccer??" "Who cares??" "What’s that??"

The one sport (besides hockey) that the USA competes in regularly that involves international play and they bag it. They have audacity to call the World Series the World Series when only American teams play it. The World Baseball Classic should get the rights to call their tournament the World Series. It’s a much more comprehensive tournament than the World Series and shows off much more baseball talent.

Speaking of talent….I had a conversation (actually the same conversation with a number of people) about one of the reasons why the USA doesn’t support football (soccer):

"The best athletes don’t play it"

Excuse me?? Excuse me??

Didn’t Michael Jordan *attempt* to play Major League Baseball? Actually he only made it to the minors and *STILL* got cut. I guess that means the best athletes don’t play baseball (or that MJ isn’t an athlete). What about Randy Moss? I haven’t seen him play pro basketball…what’s up with that? Betcha Mario Lemieux can’t dunk a basketball or run a 4.5-40 either. Can *any* of the forementioned "athletes" juggle a soccerball past a couple of people and kick it through a goal from 25 yards out? Doubt it. (If Mario could use a stick or bat…maybe).

It’s about America.

We *MUST* win. That’s why we don’t play internationally. Look at hockey. We have to IMPORT the players because we can’t let *other* countries beat us. There’ll be hell to pay if they do. Look at what happened in 1972 Munich. If we can’t win, we don’t want to play. Why do you think we have the NFL? or NBA? or MLB? All American, no major international sports. We can’t handle the truth. We can’t even put in amateurs in the Olympics any more because we can’t compete.

I may be a little odd here, because I think we should NOT participate in a lot of international things, but SPORTS isn’t one of them.

Enough of my rant.

With more than 5 of Team USA football retiring, we should have some nice talent coming in to replace them. I think we’ll do better in 2010. Unfortunately, football (soccer) doesn’t get the backing it should. I , for one, will do my part.

MONKS CAN WATCH, TOO: The chief of Cambodia’s Buddhist monks is cutting his charges some slack for the duration of the World Cup: They may watch the matches on television, but no cheering or getting excited. And absolutely no betting.

The country’s holy men — more than 90 percent of Cambodia’s 13 million people are Buddhist — normally aren’t supposed to watch television, movies or artistic displays. According to the strictest tenets of Buddhism, they should abstain from pleasurable activity. Gambling is a major no-no.

But monks get as excited as anyone else at the chance to watch soccer’s top stars, and Supreme Patriarch Non Ngeth is willing to make allowances for such a special occasion.

"The monks can watch the games on TV but they may not bet on the games," Non Ngeth told The Associated Press. "So far, I have received some complaints that some monks are betting during this World Cup tournament."

He also says he urged the country’s monks, if they do watch the matches, not to scream or laugh.

"Cheering or screaming while watching TV are acts appropriate for children, monks may not act like that," he said.

Non Ngeth has reason to be concerned about the country’s monks. In recent years, several monks grabbed headlines for fighting with slingshots and petrol bombs at a temple, molesting a boy, beating a man and stealing motorcycles.

OK, so let me get this straight….If I say I will abstain and don’t, I will lie about it. If I say I have never had sex before (but lied about it) and will continue to abstain and lied then—how is that any different than saying that I have had sex (but I’m a virgin)?

They are slick about this article—they know that people read this to say, "Abstinence-based sex education programs are unreliable." Instead of driving home the fact that "they" are UNABLE to know if it works.

The reason they don’t know is that they don’t know with what metrics to measure it. I would have thought simply taking the number of abstinence pledgers and seeing how many got treated for STDs, or got someone pregnant (or became pregnant themselves) as a metric. Even the ones that lie, but were taught to abstain, would work into the metric.